Darkthrone - F.O.A.D.
Given the critical drubbing F.O.A.D. (Peaceville, 2007) got, I expected the worst from it. I was surprised to find it not only bearable, but also quite likable. It's not a great album - the last half is basically mailed in - but it's memorable. The songs are head-smackingly simple, and, more importantly, funny as hell.Canadian MetalThe Church of Real Metal
That's probably the problem people have with Darkthrone now. They're no longer black metal, but blackened crust punk. And they're obviously taking the piss. Sure, Darkthrone have some classic records, but they were followers, not leaders. They jumped on the death metal bandwagon, making a fine Swedish death metal record in Soulside Journey (at that point, Fenriz was actually a formidable drummer). Then they switched to black metal and made some beautifully shitty-sounding and horribly inconsistent records. If any band ever needed a "best of" compilation, it's Darkthrone.
Now, freed of corpsepaint and mystique, Darkthrone have more of an identity than ever. I actually remember most of the songs on F.O.A.D., even if half of them are pretty bad; I couldn't say that for Transilvanian Hunger. And Fenriz is hands down the funniest man in metal. An entire song devoted to Canadian metal? Awesome. When he and Nocturno Culto put their minds to it, they can still crank out great riffs - the little octave drop in "The Church of Real Metal" (see, e.g., 0:57) always gets me. Sometimes I wish the production gave a damn - but if it did, it wouldn't be Darkthrone.
What fills me with childish glee about F.O.A.D. is its liner notes. These are some of the best album liner notes I've ever seen. Each song comes with a paragraph describing the influences and story behind it. The songs themselves are about metal ("I've made my own code / Sold my soul to Manilla Road / Modern metal I don't give a fuck / UH! I was raised on rock"). Darkthrone are a meta-metal band now; they even cite themselves as an influence here. The liner notes are filled with pictures of Fenriz' infamous camping trips. His thank-you list even includes his "dearly beloved one-man tent."
To top it all off, Fenriz adds a list of twenty metal records he thinks you should buy, along with one-line descriptions of each (Agent Steel, Skeptics Apocalypse: "If you don't like this, you can just give up being metal.") This record is one big love letter to metal. Even if sometimes it seems like Wesley Willis is writing it, how can that not warm me cockles? Every time I hear F.O.A.D., it puts a big smile on my face. Anyone who frowns on that - well, they can fuck off and die.
F.O.A.D. is available physically in the US from Relapse and The End, and in Europe from Peaceville; it's available digitally from Amazon.
Labels: black metal, clee, d-beat/crust punk, norway
6 Comments:
You know, I have a certain impression about how any new Darkthrone record is made. I imagine it starts with a telephone call from Fenriz to Nocturno Culto, where they both discover that they've run out of beer money. So, they call their label and tell them that a new Darkthrone record is almost ready, and then they slap together some old, tired riffs and write some ham-fisted lyrics and record the whole thing in zero time, and... voila, a new Darkthrone record is out and the boys have their beer-money. Sounds harsh?... Well, I, for one, don't buy the "black'n'roll" tag...
I have a similar theory, but I think that some residual greatness from before seeps through the low ambition, and the band hits gold about 50% of the time. And I'm sure they put a *lot* of effort into the liner notes here...perhaps more than the music!
Ahhh, that's bullshit. If you watch some of those interviews with Fenriz, even despite the classic humor, every now and then he breaks into some serious rants about how he's been working the same job since he was a kid to pay for equipment and shit for the band. And he still works a day job, as I'm sure Nocturno Culto does as well. I don't think they make a ton of money from the band at all, I mean, they never play live, and what band really makes shit off records these days? I truly believe that they don't give a fuck what anyone thinks and do what they want to do because they enjoy it. I haven't seen the liner notes yet (I still have to pick up a hard copy of this album), but that kind of shit comes from people that love music, man. You have to respect that.
Darkthrone are an embarassment.
I admit it; I don't "get" Darkthrone, and I'm done trying. I've got nine Darkthrone albums on my iPod (if it wasn't a massive 160GB unit, I'd delete 'em all) and every time I try to listen to one, I get about halfway through the first song and bail out.
I'd rather hear blackend punk Darkthrone then shitty 'raw black metal' Darkthrone.
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